Square Dance

by Alan Hines

Set on the Blackland prairie of Texas in the early 1950s, Square Dance is the story of Homer Dillard, a cantankerous old man, and his eleven-year-old precocious and Bible-toting granddaughter, Gemma. They live together on a tumbledown chicken farm and sell eggs door to door in the nearby small town of Twilight. Dillard is eighty years old, left by his wife and by his daughter, Gemma's mother. Both have been abandoned, and their grudging loyalty to each other is at once fierce and touching. Incensed by Dillard's cussedness, Gemma finally packs up out of moral indignation and strikes off for the supposed glamour of Fort Worth, where her estranged mother lives a life of tawdry failure as a hairdresser.

So begins Gemma's remarkable journey, and in telling it, Alan Hines has created a rich, touching, and funny novel about the pains of growing up and growing old.

297 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Kitty Tomlinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in 1950s rural Texas and Fort Worth. Gemma comes of age. She grew up in rural Twilight, TX with her grandfather until she goes at 12 to live with her mother, Juanelle, in Fort Worth.

[Jadine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not sure where I heard of this but it was made into a movie, might be why I wanted to read it. That happens to me often, I have a long list of books I want to read, but by the time I read them I don't remember why I wanted to read them in the first place.